The games we play
by RocknRollagirl
Summary: "I just think that it d be nice if we could make our own rules every now and then." Or, the Winchester boys, a deck of cards and something about life.


**Hey folks;)**

 **This is my contribution to this year´s supernatural summergen over on LJ.** **The lovely verucasalt123 gave me five prompts to choose from out of which I picked: "card/board game" to inspire this little piece.** **The equally lovely and very talented soncnica betaed this for me, so all the credit for making this as grammatically correct as possible goes to her, all the remaining mistakes are mine alone.**

 **You know what´s not mine though? Supernatural. For now...**

 **Warnings: some swearing, canonical character death**

 **Hope you like it;)**

* * *

„Dean, I´m bored."

Sam isn´t whining. He´d surpassed whining a few hours ago. His latest admission is soft, bordering on desperate, and that´s the only reason why Dean can stop himself from taking his pillow and committing fratricide with it. Because in all honesty, he can relate.

Out of all the sleazy places they stayed in his fourteen-year-old life, this one definitely takes the cake: a bath you can hardly turn around in, a carpet that makes scrunching sounds whenever you walk over it, bare white walls that are uncomfortably reminiscent of Hillmore High´s detention room; a place where he´d spent more time than he cared to admit over the last four months before they moved. There´s an A/C in the room which, according to the sounds it makes, works overtime to maintain a room temperature that actually allows for human life, but it isn´t any more successful on that front than Dean would be at playing a violin solo. And that´s all there is to see. No books, no TV, no nothing.

Dad promised them this would be a temporary solution, didn´t even roll his eyes when Sam, eyes locked on this broom closet that posed as a motel room, asked him in a small voice to pinky swear.

"I just have to meet up with Reynolds, compare notes and talk this thing through. I´ll be back before nightfall, boys, alright?"

He patted them both on the shoulder, handed them a few bottles of water, a can of Spaghetti O´s and the shotgun and left as soon as all the salt lines where in place, leaving nothing but a stern order to stay inside in his wake.

And as much as Dean wanted to protest against that, he knew his father had a point. They´d driven around for more than an hour until they found their current place of residence, that someone with a sick sense of humour had the nerve to name Happy Traveler´s Inn and it was the only motel that didn´t immediately send all of Dean´s spidey senses into overdrive. They´ve come around enough for him to be able to quickly differentiate a rough but harmless neighbourhood from the kind you don´t want to be caught alone in, especially not with a ten-year-old kid in tow. And as much as staying inside sucked, it was probably not going to get them killed in a random shoot-out or kidnapped by a junkie.

At first, everything went pretty smoothly. Sam got started on a homework essay he knew perfectly well he was never going to hand in and Dean knew better than to interrupt the little nerd. Instead, he used the peace and quiet to page through the car magazine he bought during a pit stop the previous day, clean the shotgun, sharpen his knife and, when his stomach started to rumble, heat the can of Spaghetti O´s for lunch. By the time all the dishes were dried, Sam finished his assignment and started to search for his copy of "The Hobbit", only to discover that, apparently, he´d left the book in their former flat in Hillmore.

Even though Dean could never fully understand his little brother´s emotional attachment to stained paperbacks he already knew by heart, he wasn´t just about to stand there and watch him fight back tears. Ever the man of action, he procured the football Bobby had given him for Christmas three years ago from the depths of his duffel and they tried tossing it around in the cramped room for a while until the inevitable happened: After a particularly skilful toss from Dean ("That´s right, kiddo, you gotta learn from the master!") that Sam happened to be too small to catch, the ball rebounded from the wall, flew back in a wide arch and knocked the bedside lamp to the floor ("Well, the master is more than welcome to explain this to dad!").

The next half hour was spent trying to fix the broken glass of the light bulb with the tape from the bedside table´s top drawer, Sam holding a flashlight for proper illumination and Dean carefully applying the tape to the shards with all the concentration of a field surgeon performing a c-section during an earthquake. The operation´s result probably wouldn´t pass any closer inspections, but the brothers agreed that it did look passable from a reasonable distance.

When they were done with damage control, Dean went back to his magazine and Sam busied himself with his crayons, trying to draw the cars his brother was showing him and thinking up all kinds of improvements from extra wheels to rocket engines. After the sixth drawing was finished, Sam announced - for the first time - that he was bored.

Dean grumbled and rolled his eyes in the way any self-respecting older brother would before he admitted, if only to himself, that he could share Sam´s sentiment. Cars were great and everything, but they didn´t really make for a whole afternoon´s entertainment.

And that was where the real struggle begun: they quickly figured out that there was no point in trying to play catch or hide and seek in a single, sparsely furnished room. Throwing the ball was already out for obvious reasons. Sam was tired of drawing and Dean decidedly against rock-paper-scissors, still sore from having lost dishwashing duties to his brother three weeks in a row over the last month.

At this point, the debate got interrupted by a heated discussion that begun with "I bet I can throw a knife better than you!" " "Ha, in your dreams!" and quickly derailed into "I know you ate the last chocolate bar on the way here!" "Well, maybe I did, but at least I don´t snore!".

Somewhere along the line, logic left the building and didn´t bother to look back to see the brothers rolling on the floor in the middle of a ferocious tickle fight, that eventually ended abruptly when Dean´s back collided with the edge of the coffee table.

After it was determined that Dean wasn´t in need of his brother´s "friggin mother-hen routine", they both laid on the crunchy carpet for a while, breathing heavily and trading playful insults until they got bored of that, too.

That was when Dean brought out the cards. Courtesy of long hours spend in the backseat on the great American highways, Sam was pretty well versed in just about every card game Dean himself was familiar with, ranging from Go fish over Rummy to Black Jack and Poker and they spent over two hours with their heads bowed over their cards in concentration.

By the time they finished their twentieth game it was four in the afternoon and still at least five hours 'till dad said he´d be back. They were both wired and restless and the teasing barbs they´d tossed around during the first games slowly became more and more heated. After Dean called Sam a "completely hopeless cry-baby" for loosing a round and Sam called Dean a "stupid show-off jerk" for bragging about the win they both tossed the cards in each others faces and retreated to separate halves of the room to brood in silence.

They both lasted about half an hour until Dean couldn´t stand the absolute nothingness any longer, mumbled a silent but honest "I´m sorry" and got an equally heartfelt "Me too" in return. Once again united in the effort to fight boredom they played I Spy. They played twenty questions. They looked outside the window to guess license plates. They played truth or dare. And eventually, they gave up.

Which brought them to where they are at the moment, sitting on the bed further from the door and staring at the wall with Sam stating that he is – wait for it - bored.

Dean heaves a sigh and rubs the heel of his right hand over his eyes.

"I know, Sammy. Believe me, I know."

"I wish we could go outside."

"Yeah, that would be cool, but you know why dad said we can´t", Dean responds, even though he can´t help but think that right now, getting caught up in a random shoot-out sounds more appealing than spending another minute sitting in this goddamn room.

"Yeah. I´m sure he knows what he´s doing." Sam trails his fingers over the bedspread forlornly. "I just think that it´d be nice if we could make our own rules every now and then."

Dean chuckles drily. "I hear you."

Not that there´s anything wrong with most of dad´s rules, but he certainly wouldn´t mind setting his own curfew. Or picking the TV station. Or deciding on whether it´s worse to push a kid around with your buddies for wearing the wrong glasses or to tell those dickheads off and accidentally break a nose in the process. Sadly, the latest judge on that matter was Mr. Gregory Duncan, who was blind both literally and metaphorically and the main reason why Dean spent so much time in detention at Hillmore High.

Dragging his thoughts away from the past he lets his eyes wander lazily over the glued lamp on the night stand to Sam´s drawings on the three-legged table over to the abandoned cards on the floor.

 _Our own rules, huh?_

He heaves himself off the bed and bends down to pick the cards up from where they threw them down in anger after their last game. When he turns back to his brother, Sam is still sitting unmoving, arms wrapped around his knees.

"To be honest, I don´t really want to play another round of Poker. Sorry, Dean." He mumbles, meeting Dean´s eyes in a silent apology. Dean shakes his head, a fond smile tugging at his lips. Sam can be an annoying pain in his ass when he wants, but when it really comes down to it, his little brother would bent over backwards to avoid being a burden to him, wherever he got that ridiculous idea from.

He plops back down on the bed and gives Sam´s shoulder a friendly shove, glad when he´s rewarded with a reluctant smile.

"Who´s talking about Poker?"

He makes a show out of shuffling the cards, then drops his voice as if he´s telling a secret.

"Don´t tell me you´ve never heard of Dean Winchester´s card game of unrivalled awesomeness?"

Sam cocks his head to the side, brows furrowed somewhere between _Wait what?_ and _Are you kidding me?_

"Now you´re just making fun of me!"

"Me? Pray tell, dear brother, have I ever made fun of you?"

Dean puts a hand to his chest in mock affront while his brother gives him The Eyebrow, a look so serious and calculating it looks a little disturbing on his young face.

"Okay, alright, I´ll take that back. Also, it´s totally alright if you´ve never heard of this card game, because it happens to be brand new. In fact, we´re about to invent it right now."

Understanding dawns on his brother´s face, sceptical confusion replaced with eager excitement.

"You mean we can make our own game up? That´s awesome!"

"No need to sound so surprised, Sammy, it was my idea, after all."

"Do I have to remind you what happened to the lamp thanks to your last idea?"

"So? The lamp totally had it coming."

Sam snorts and shakes his head, knowing when there´s no winning against his brother´s unique reasoning. Instead, he turns his attention back towards the cards.

"Okay, how does this work?"

Dean puts his chin in his hand, looking at the deck between them contemplatively.

"Mmh. I´d say who´s first to lose all his cards wins. We can go with ten to begin with." He quickly counts out ten cards for Sam and himself before he puts down his first to reveal a ten of spades.

"And every ten means the other has to take three." He concludes with a gleeful grin. Sam shoots him a dirty look but complies and puts down an eight of hearts with a smirk.

"If you play a number of hearts, the other has to do as many sit-ups as the card says."

Now it´s Dean´s turn to glare before he drops to the floor and starts counting.

From there it quickly escalates. After the first five cards were played and five new rules established, Sam decides it´s time to make it official and uses a blank page from his notebook to carefully write their rules down. By the time it gets too dark outside to properly see without turning on the broken lamp they´ve filled the whole page.

 _Ten= take three cards._

 _For heart numbers- sit-ups_

 _Ace of diamonds= player has to wear his shirt backwards for the rest of the game_

 _Five=the other has to pause for the next round_

 _Joker = get-out-of-jail-free card_

 _Two= you´re not allowed to talk for the whole round. If you do, you loose_

 _Seven of clubs= you have to drink one glass of water in under 7 seconds_

 _Six of diamonds= battle card: player picks a battle (who holds his breath longer/ breaks down a gun quicker/etc.) and the person who looses has to take 5_

 _Three of hearts= "Tell me something I don´t know"-card. If the other person does know what you´re saying, you take two cards. And no, you´re not allowed to cheat, Dean!_

 _Ace of hearts=Dare or dare. Not complying means loosing_

 _King= player picks a colour_

 _Four= players switch cards_

 _Queen of spades: player can give the other two cards_

 _Jack of clubs= ultimate card of doom. Player loses immediately_

s _Eight of spades= Big brother wins by default._ /s _Don´t be ridiculous, Dean! Aww, don´t be such a killjoy!_

Deciding against turning on the lamp because neither wants to risk it exploding, they sit beside each other in the darkness and look their list over with Dean´s flashlight.

"I think we need a name for our game, don´t you?" Sam looks up at him questioningly.

"And one that´s not "Dean Winchester´s card game of unrivalled awesomeness"!"

"Hey, there´s nothing wrong with that name!"

"There´s also nothing right with that name!" There goes The Eyebrow again.

"Ok, ok, untwist your panties, Samantha. How about "Sam and Dean Winchester´s card game of unrivalled awesomeness"?"

Sam tries to keep his disapproving frown in place but, Dean can see the corners of his mouth twitching suspiciously.

"I´m just glad you weren´t in charge of picking my name when I was born."

"Pfff, I still think Olga would´ve suited you nicely-"

Sam narrows his eyes, gripping the pen like he would a knife, but he´s still trying to keep himself from chuckling.

"Keep that up and we´ll see how nicely this pen fits into your nose!"

"Uhh, bring it on, kiddo!"

They stare at each other approximately four seconds before bursting out laughing. When he can breathe again, Sam picks the pen up and carefully writes "Sam and Dean´s card game" over the list of rules, then folds the paper and tucks it into the box behind the cards. After a second´s consideration, he quickly draws an S and a D on the top of the box, the thin lines hardly visible on the plastic and yet something about it makes Dean´s chest go tight.

"That way we can always see which one is ours."

"Good idea, Sammy." He mumbles, annoyed at his voice for sounding so raspy all of a sudden. Sam seems to notice too, eyebrows drawn together in concern, but fortunately, the sound of a familiar engine rumbling in the parking lot saves his dignity.

"Dad is back!"

Sam jumps of the bed excitedly and heads for the door, grabbing the shotgun and the holy water from the table as part of the traditional Winchester homecoming ritual.

"Can this be our secret, Dean?" He asks in a conspiratorial whisper, the childlike glee in his eyes such a sharp contrast to his fingers holding the gun with practised ease that Dean allows himself a second to think just how _wrong_ that looks, before he shakes it off and joins his brother by the door, right in time to hear dad do the secret knock of the week.

"Sure thing, Sammy."

* * *

It remains a secret between them.

They only play when they´re alone, the card game with their initials on it safely hidden at the bottom of Dean´s duffel for the rest of the time. They use it to escape the boredom of yet another long day in a motel room, or to determine who does the dishes, cleans the guns, washes the car. They play for the last chocolate bar in the fridge or the dinner choosing privileges.

Over the years, the page with the initial set of rules is filled with corrections and additions, lines crossed out so many times the originals are practically indecipherable. They begin to play for who digs up the grave, who cleans the blood out of their shirts, who buries the monster. Glasses of water get changed with glasses of beer when everything went well, glasses of whiskey when it didn´t.

As Sam grows older, he doesn´t want to play as much anymore. He doesn´t want to play the good son, play the hunter, play the game. Dean is left to watch it happen, wanting nothing more than to understand. He´d do anything to change the rules and see his brother happy again but, for the first time in his life, he doesn´t know how.

Sam thinks his only chance to stop playing is to run away, to throw his cards down and burn them and he forces himself to believe it when he screams back in dad´s face, when he watches Dean stand by wordlessly, when he throws the door shut behind him and climbs up into a bus towards California. It´s only when he unpacks his bag in a tiny dorm room, his roommate snoring three feet away, and finds the old card game underneath his shirts that he allows himself to think that maybe, there´s no winning to be found in loosing his family. It takes him a long time to stop crying that night.

The game stays with him through his time at college. Whenever he feels like he´s drowning in this world that he fooled himself to believe is the real thing, only to discover that he merely had to change his game face, he picks it up and hears his brother, hears something about making their own rules. He spends nights staring at it, the finger of his other hand hovering over the call button of his phone. And hates Dean for not saying anything back then, for never calling him, but he hates himself for it even more.

Then he meets Jessica and, at least for a little while, actually believes it can be possible for him to do his own thing and get away with it, to steal some happiness and keep it. When Dean shows up at his door with news of a father gone and a ghost on the loose he follows and returns to see his winning hand go up in flames. He looks at her burning and wishes it was him.

* * *

It´s been a week since Palo Alto and Dean honestly begins to think he can´t take another second of this. This absolute nothing.

He never thought having Sam back could be worse than missing him, but now he sometimes catches himself thinking he´d rather be alone than to be forced to look at the empty man that used to be his little brother.

He thinks he understands, but in reality, he probably doesn´t. Sam said as much, shouting at him hoarsely, eyes bright with tears, the night after the funeral and he swallowed his angry response because maybe Sam´s right. He was only four, after all, and while his little brother would never honestly belittle his grief for their mother, he also just lost his entire life in a single night, again, and if Dean was honest with himself, he can´t even imagine what that´s like, much less understand.

So they´re here, an hour outside of Maryland, which happened to be as far away from California as they could get in three days of straight driving. The motel room is actually nice for a change: clean, spacious and with an endless supply of hot water that Dean can´t get Sam to make use of. His brother is sitting on the bed like he can´t even be bothered to lie down and Dean stands by the small kitchenette making honest to God soup because he´s slowly getting desperate.

Sam´s been switching between hell-bent on revenge and basically catatonic for a week, the stretches of catatonic growing exponentially longer as time passes. He hasn´t said a single word since waking up this morning.

At first, Dean was just fine with that because he was tired, too. Tired and worried and shaken and constantly torn between _Sammy´s back_ and _Why did you leave us_ and _Please don´t leave again,_ because his brother wouldn´t talk, wouldn´t sleep, wouldn´t eat. It´s like he just stopped, like he´d given up on life and it terrified Dean more than any monster he´s ever had to face. He wasn´t good with fear, neither admitting to it nor showing it and his attempt to shake his brother out of his daze the day before had ended in a vicious shouting match and angry banging of doors. Dean spent the night in the car and when Sam sat down next to him wordlessly this morning, he was happy with the silence.

At least until he realized it had nothing to do with their fight. His brother wasn´t brooding, wasn´t throwing him glares or giving him the cold shoulder. He just sat there unmoving, like Dean wasn´t even there. Like the world wasn´t even there or at least like he would honestly prefer if it wasn´t.

"Hey; Sammy, soup´s up."

He fills the clear liquid in two bowls and places them on the table as casual as possible. Sam doesn´t move.

"Come on, man, it´s getting cold."

He doesn´t want to sound so desperate about a fucking bowl of soup and yet, he can´t help himself.

"Sam?"

Maybe it´s his despair that actually gets through to his brother, because this time he slowly turns around, squinting up at Dean like the last streams of sunlight filtering in through the curtain hurt his eyes.

"Not hungry," he mumbles and Dean wants to scream, wants to smash the bowls on the wall, wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him until-

"Sorry, Dean."

All the fight drains out of him so quickly Dean has to reach out to the table to steady himself at hearing Sam´s mumbled apology. It´s not about the stupid soup, of course, not really, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden burn of tears.

"It´s okay."

But it´s not, it´s so far from okay there are no fucking words for it. He puts the bowl down slowly before dropping in the chair, because what´s the point in staying upright, anyway? What´s the point?

When he feels like he can open his eyes again without opening the flood gates his gaze falls on the duffels they carried inside and carelessly tossed into the corner when they came in. Sam didn´t close his properly, probably wouldn´t have brought it at all if Dean didn´t remind him and two of his shirts, a paperback and a card game had spilled out on the floor.

 _Card game?_

Dean´s mouth goes dry when he recognizes the old box, their letters on the plastic long since faded, and this time he isn´t quick enough to stop the tears from falling.

He doesn´t care, either, just stands up and walks over to gently pick up the box. He looks over at his brother´s back, then down at the cards. Sees the worn paper with their rules in ten-year old Sam´s careful print.

He knows it´s risky, but at this point, he doesn´t really have anything left to loose.

"Come on, Sam, at least try the soup."

His voice shakes along with his hands as he rounds the bed and slowly sits down next to his brother. Sam doesn´t look up, his jaw clenched in a way that means he´s also fighting to hold back tears. "I can´t Dean, real-"

"I´ll play you for it."

Dean gently puts the card game down on the bed between them. And holds his breath. Waits for his brother to start shouting, or crying, or even worse, not reacting at all.

There´s a choked off sound coming from Sam they both pretend wasn´t a sob and his fingers close around the cards, strong enough to turn his knuckles white.

"How can I play when she´s dead?" His brother´s voice is wrecked with grief in a way that he´s never heard before, the words pressed out between clenched teeth.

Dean knows this is his only chance.

"I don´t know, man. Honestly, I don´t know how, but you have to find a way! You-"

He clears his throat, fingers digging into his leg because if he says it now, it´ll be true in a way he doesn´t know if he can deal with.

"You can´t give up, because that´d mean you lose. And you can´t. And I can´t - I can´t lose you. So, just, please-" He can feel tears run down his cheeks again, doesn´t need to look up to know that Sam is crying, too. "Please try, okay? That´s all I ask."

He feels strangely weightless after he finishes, like he´d just stripped himself bare in a way that´s uncomfortable in its unfamiliarity and strangely cathartic at the same time. And as much as he tries, somehow he still can´t stop crying.

Sam opens his mouth to answer, then closes it. Clenches his hands into fists and tries again, fails again, tears dropping from his chin to his collar. In the end, he simply nods and that´s that.

They don´t hug. They don´t touch. They don´t even look at each other. But something´s changed and they both know it, suffocating despair not gone but somehow lightened. They will get back in the game, eventually. And for now, they just sit side by side in shared silence and wait for the tears to stop.

* * *

 **That´s it for now. Drop me a line to let me know what you think:)**


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